


Constancy

by nuclearchinchilla



Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 21:29:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12219300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuclearchinchilla/pseuds/nuclearchinchilla
Summary: "No doubt you say to yourself that you can take it or leave it alone," he once told Spode, "but isn't there the danger of the thing becoming habit-forming?"He doesn't have Spode's habit of breaking necks. But he does have many habits himself, Bertie later considers. If his valet can count as a habit, that is.





	Constancy

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick thing because I felt like it. It's in my voice and not Bertie's, which I hope is at least excusable since this is third-person POV. Comments very welcome as usual.

It's the inevitability of the thing. The invariability.

There's no doubt that his mind is a little bit of mess and sometimes he doesn't know how he started a train of thought or where to end it. But, invariably, it all comes back to Jeeves. It all, invariably, comes back to his apartment in the metrop. It's not just his thoughts, of course, which invariably find a way of turning to Jeeves. It's everything. They might break apart, briefly, because of some trivial spat he'll forget a week down the line, but they come back together, always.

The man is a habit he cannot break.

And it's hard to hold on to the memory of a burnt down cottage, or the pain of a rainy bicycle ride- not when he comes home and everything is, invariably, where it should be.

Every scheme of Jeeves ends in almost the same way. Every engagement is invariably scuttled, and he is delivered soundly away from the jaws of matrimony. Every detective novel, invariably, goes back to where he took it from. Every surface of 6A Berkeley Mansions, no matter when he checks, is spick and span as it always is. Sometimes, he spots the slight stain of his fingerprint on a piano key, and he smiles, as it is a half-familiar sight in itself. It would be cleaned up, invariably, before the day's end. Even his rubber duck sits, invariably, in that special spot on the little shelf overlooking his tub. It's the constancy of the thing. It's calming. Soothing, even.

The house however, is not exactly his home. He supposes Jeeves is his home, because he knows the house is never anything without the man. So when he does return home, and he always does, to those invariably white gloves of his valet, to that invariably minty smell of the brillantine his man never changes the brand of, to that whiff of a collar invariably starched stiff- he realizes, the invariability is what breeds the inevitability of the thing. The inevitability that, as the days turned to weeks and  the weeks turned to months, he should fall in love with this Iodestar of his life.

They decided on this little spark of change, slowly, through those silent glances of theirs and their subtle words. Not because they were afraid of discussing it openly, but simply because they didn't need to. Their thoughts were too entwined with each other's, their lives tangled together too intricately, for them to know anything less than each other's every thought. So it happened, inevitably, that as the days turned to weeks and the weeks turned to months, they should come together in the night, and whisper endearing words into each other's ears as they willed this time of intimacy away. Even that, eventually, became a part of their invariability- unless Bertram goes out to his club, it would always be 11pm sharp that they would shed the outer layers, and pass the time before sunrise in that hazy dreamlike world invariably scented with brillantine, starch, musk and incorrigible innocence.

He had, in his Etonian and Oxonian days, heard many complaints from old school chums that every day in the school was exactly like every day in their last four years within those walls. They said that time couldn't flow properly in that sort of monotony, and that sooner or later everyone would lose track of the days of the week, if not for the changes in their diet every now and then.

But there is a difference, he supposes, between monotony and constancy. It's his years before Jeeves that have blurred into a murky watercolour, but every moment with his man is a portrait in itself. There is an invariability in their lives, he must admit. Indeed, every day he wakes at the same moment of half past ten, unless his hangover is that rare sort of sharp. Indeed, Jeeves would be there at that precise hour, just like every day before, with a plate of bacon and eggs of invariably the same portion as every day before, and a restorative if necessary. Invariably, Jeeves would be standing there, with the same ruler straightness to his spine as is always, with the same dignity and poise and grace as he always carries himself, with that slight tugging on the corner of his lips to signify an almost-smile when he does purr out a low and soothing 'good morning, sir'.

But it's not monotony. And Bertie knows it, because every day when he wakes at the precise hour of half past ten and beholds that poised almost-smiling visage of Jeeves, it just doesn't feel to him like any day before. It feels, in that instance of seeing the man, like a fresh new day. It feels that way, even though he sees the man every day- maybe he plain can't get tired of it all. He knows it, because his mood brightens further and his heart jumps quicker at every single morning's purr of a greeting, at every single day's morning kiss. Every time that happens, he flushes over said lip lock rather excitedly, as if that had never happened before and would never happen again.

He asks Jeeves one morning. "What was that quote thingummy, Jeeves, that Mrs Little was spewing out so repeatedly? The one from a new book about a married chap pining for some other filly, so it won a prize because rummy marriages is the cat's pajamas with critics now?"

"That is an astute observation which describes many a modern novel, sir."

"Well, I suppose so. It had something about happening over and over again. I remember Mrs Little going on about it just three days ago."

"'Age of Innocence' by Edith Wharton, sir. I believe the quote you are looking for is," Jeeves halted briefly. He locked eyes with Bertie intently, and spoke differently, 'each time, you happen to me all over again'."

And every day Jeeves does- he really does.


End file.
